OIKOS -- A subwoofer is a speaker designed to reproduce
very low frequencies. Speakers generally fall into one of several catagories:
A
tweeter reproduces very high frequencies. A
midrange speaker obviously is used to reproduce the mid range, and a
woofer is used for low frequencies. There are also full range speakers that attempt cover the entire audio spectrum.
Most common speaker systems are two or three way designs with one or more drivers used in each range, but reproducing bass requires substantial mass, so some smaller speaker designs do put out enough bass. This is OK in a small apartment, but if you want to fill a large space with kickass bass, a subwoofer with a separate amplifier is one way to do it.
The good news is that low frequencies are pretty non-directional, so a single subwoofer can be used to reproduce the low bass range for the combined left and right channels. In fact, if you understand the physics of sound reproduction, you'd know that separated subwoofers would probably cause more problems than they would fix, but that's another subject.
I'm glad a couple of other guys had the courtesy to give
OIKOS a straight answer, among the jokers.
Facebook
Twitter